1. Field
One embodiment of the invention relates generally to a system, such as an Internet Protocol (IP) telephone system, for performing multimedia communication among terminals via an IP network. More specifically, the present invention relates to a server apparatus for executing communication among terminals connected to the IP network and battery-driven terminals, and relates to battery-driven terminal apparatuses.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, an IP telephone system for interactively transmitting/receiving images and voices, as packet data, in real time has been in widespread use. The IP telephone system accommodates a plurality of IP telephone terminals in an IP network such as a local area network (LAN) and the Internet, and connects the IP network to a public network through a gateway, wherein the gateway converts addresses and then enables multimedia information communication among IP telephone terminals, and among the IP telephone terminals and the public network.
Meanwhile, the system mentioned above enables the multimedia information communication also among battery-driven and small-sized portable terminals and the IP telephone terminals. In this case, a communication server side does not specifically acquire information of battery states of the terminals, and provides uniform communication services regardless of the battery states of the terminals.
Therefore, when remaining battery amounts are small, if not important incoming calls or communication using moving images has occurred, the batteries become in short of those remaining amounts, and important communication may be interrupted in the middle thereof or may not be received.
Conventionally, a client system in which battery-driven terminals transmit information of remaining amounts of batteries to a server apparatus, and the server apparatus which has received this information switches a kind of content data to be transmitted in response to the remaining battery amounts is disclosed (e.g., Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2007-267335).
Meanwhile, the foregoing client system switches the kind of the content data to be transmitted in response to the remaining battery amounts, and does not provide any communication service corresponding to the remaining battery amounts.